My computer monitor advertises a 1ms response time and the refresh rate is 144Hz. Wouldn’t that mean that the best response time possible is 1/144s?
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The response time is the time it takes to shift displaying one color to another. Being able to very quickly switch between colors doesn’t mean the monitor is being directed to display new colors that quickly. A monitor with a 1 ms response time running at 1000 Hz would constantly be changing colors, only having just arrived at the color from the previous frame when it starts to shift to the next.
The response time of a monitor refers to the amount of time it takes for a pixel to change from one color to another and back again. It is typically measured in milliseconds (ms). The refresh rate of a monitor, on the other hand, refers to the number of times the display is updated per second and is typically measured in Hertz (Hz).
A monitor with a high refresh rate will be able to display more frames per second, which can make the image appear smoother and more fluid. However, the refresh rate does not directly affect the response time of the monitor.
It is possible for a monitor to have a fast response time even if it has a lower refresh rate. This is because the response time is determined by the speed at which the individual pixels can change color, while the refresh rate is determined by the speed at which the display can update the entire screen.
So, to answer your question, a monitor with a 1ms response time and a 144Hz refresh rate would be able to change the color of individual pixels very quickly, allowing it to display fast-moving content smoothly. The refresh rate of 144Hz would allow the display to update the entire screen 144 times per second, further improving the smoothness of the image.
It updates what the pixels are asked to do at 144Hz, and once it does, it takes 1ms for that to actually happen.
Just like how you see an after-image when you look away from a bright light, It takes time for an LCD pixel to change colour. Response time describes how quicky a pixel moves between opposite colours. The shorter the response time, the less images blur as they move across the screen.
You want the response time to be shorter than the refresh interval. Otherwise one frame just bleeds into the next and surplus speed becomes meaningless.
That 1ms is talking about a single pixel, after it’s been told to change colors.
The number you want is called latency, and isn’t often advertised, sometimes it’s called input lag. Some monitors have low latency modes which disable some processing intensive features.
There are a lot of other things besides refresh rate and response time that impact latency.
>Wouldn’t that mean that the best response time possible is 1/144s?
The contribution to latency just from refresh rate would be a random delay between 0 and 1/144s, depending on when the event happens in relation to the refresh cycle.
The response rate is the time between when the source send the frame to the display, and when the display updates. So the source is sending 144 frames to the monitor, and every frame, the monitor updates the image shown in 1 ms.
Your source probably can’t produce 1000 frames per second anyway, so there is no need to make a monitor that can handle frames that fast.
You are a display’s processor, in control of one pixel, you can drop a red, green, or blue ball down a hole to land on the display. You can move up to 144 balls in one second, but, it takes 1 millisecond for the ball to land through the hole.
The main limit is not the time it takes for a ball to land, it’s how often you are able to pick and drop a ball.
The refresh rate is how many frames it tries to show each second. The response time is how long it takes to go from one frame to the next.
`1/144Hz = 6.9ms`
`1ms / 6.9ms = 0.144 = 14.4%`
With the numbers you gave, the monitor is going to repeatedly spend 1ms transitioning to the next frame, then 5.9ms staying still on that frame. So it’ll spend 14.4% of its time transitioning and 85.6% of its time showing you the image.
If the monitor had a 1000Hz refresh rate and a 1ms response time it would always be transitioning. It’d never stop to show you an image. You’ve done a reasonable calculation in your head, but you thought it was a minimum when it’s actually a maximum.
Even my old plasma screen was refreshing at 600hz. It flashed a pixel 10x before looking at the next frame for a new pixel colour.
Hz is how often it is able to change, response time is how long it takes from getting signal from the gpu to displaying it
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